Chapter 1385: A warrior’s sense(2)

Three days later, the rolling plains of Sevariorari were choked with the dark, iron tide of the Yarzat legions.

Moons ago, such a sight would have sent local lords scrambling to fortify their keep walls, rustic bells clanging across the countryside as terrified smallfolk abandoned their homesteads to run for walled cities in the impatient and terrified waiting for a siege. But now, the land lay beneath the shadow of the Falcon. The peasants simply hid their daughters, bolted their shutters, and waited for the war-machine to pass over them, praying the king’s discipline held.

The only protest came from Lord Flynt, the "Chuckler" of Sevariorari, who sent a single, pristine parchment rider-delivered letter of protest.

A letter Edric wouldn’t have bothered using to wipe his ass.

"Tell your lord we are here hunting vermin," Edric had instructed the trembling herald after taking a quick glance at its words. "We have reliable intelligence that the Vulture Lord has taken refuge in his lordship’s forests. We hold no contempt for Lord Flynt’s territorial rights, nor do we hold him accountable for bandits hiding in his woods, as forests are well known for harboring all manner of filth. Inform him we shall be out of his hair the moment we pluck the feathers off the Vulture. And assure him that by the King’s honor, his peace shall be upheld and his smallfolk left unharmed."He had smiled ’’This time we come as protectors rather than invaders.Tell him to rejoyce’’

The messenger, stubborn as a mule, had still dared to bluster about how it was improper for the King’s host to march across a lord’s domain without prior written consent.

Edric had zero intention of wasting precious days writing polite petitions, begging the fucking Chuckler of all people to understand their plight and grant them passage. At best, it would stall a trap that was already snapping shut; at worst, if Flynt was secretly in league with the rebels, it would give the Vulture advance warning to scatter into the hills.

And that could not be.

So Edric did the only sensible thing a military man could do: he told the herald to inform his master to fuck off to the King’s court in Yarzat and try to chuckle an explanation out of the sovereign himself. For now, on the plains of Sevariorari, it was legion steel that did the talking.

If the intrusion caused friction with the Oizenite nobility, they could line up and go fuck themselves on that account too. Yarzat had already handed them their arses on a silver platter once; the only thing standing between them living in peace under the Falcon or being perpetually steeped in their own blood was a single word from the King.

With the deed done and the local lord properly infuriated for good measure, Edric could finally shed the wretched skin of a politician and submerge himself in the only world he truly understood: warfare.

For two long, miserable moons stationed at the city of Oizen, he had been forced to sit in state, enduring endless waves of petitioners. Not a day passed without the grand hall bursting at the seams with sniveling nobles and desperate smallfolk begging for one concession or another, usually "justice." He had appointed clerks to separate the chaff from the grain, but the mountain of administrative shit was endless.

He had spent more time managing the rotten consequences of his orders than actually imparting them. Local militias occupying surviving hamlets were acting no better than the brigands they were meant to deter; merchants were being shaken down along the highways by auxiliaries, and sometimes even , gods be graced for how rare it was, by legionnaires themselves.

This godsforsaken land possessed a unique poison that corroded the discipline of even the stoutest veteran. Units had been separated from their subcenturios in even smaller units, making proper military justice a nightmare to enforce, doubly so when the culprit wore black and white.

So Edric had done what any pragmatic commander must in term of great civil peril: he closed his eyes, stuffed his ears, and pressed onward without stopping. It would be the other legates’ job to scrape the rot from their own cohorts when they returned. Gods knew he would have enough of his own to clean up once the dust settled.

Petitioners were the absolute bane of his existence, second only to the quiet, gnawing waves of despair that took him after every failed raid.

Luckily there was none of that rot inside the command pavilion today. No high dais, no soaring pillars carved now with the Falcon’s emblem, no endless line of miserable faces waiting to waste his breath.

There was only a single, massive round table of plain oak, surrounded by heavy wooden chairs. Every chair was carved to the exact same height. Here, they sat and talked as peers. Edric might have been named Warden of Oizen by royal decree, but he held no illusions of ruling the men in this room. He could command their march, certainly, but he would not presume to rule them.

He was a first among peers.

Not a king.

So he took his seat at the round table, leaning back into the sturdy oak, and waited for the remaining places to fill.

A few commanders were already seated when he arrived, and to their credit, they all had the decency to rise in quiet respect as the heavy canvas tent flap fell shut behind him.

To his left sat Ghalrim, second-in-command of the Third, accompanied by a sharp-eyed subcenturio representing the ranks of the Aracinea in their legate’s absence. Neither carried their iconic, seven-foot long halberds into the war council, the unwieldy poles had been left outside, replaced by heavy maces, arming swords, and broad daggers strapped tightly to their belts.

Present as well were the representatives of the Primogenia, led by the rather young Thalek, son of the great Betrayer. Beside him sat another subcenturio whose name Edric couldn’t quite recall, though he had a sort of gaze on him that was hard to forget.

Returning to the young man, It had been a bitter shock to the king when Lord Robert, elevated to a lordship by the King’s own hand, threw his title into the dirt to align himself with rebels and mad priests. Yet his son, Thalek, had given the Crown no whiff of treachery. Edric was not a man to visit the father’s sins upon the son, but he was no fool either; he would keep a sharp, unblinking eye on the man all the same.

Last, but certainly not least present on that moment, were the Hounds.

Every man in this room owed a debt of gratitude to those wolf-pelted bastards for the latest turn of fortune, for it was by their blood-stained hands that a high-ranking deserter from the Vulture’s inner circle had been captured.

Though, if the camp scuttlebutt was to be believed, the Hounds merely had the good fortune of plucking the fruit off the branch. Word had it that a battered, wandering hedge knight had encountered the brigand first, taking on the whole filthy band down in a creek just to defend some peasant wench.

Edric let out a low, silent chuckle in his chest. The one bloody time in recorded history an act of foolish chivalry actually produced a useful result.Maybe the knight had even got a laid for that.

He certainly hoped so, the man deserved it.

Regardless of who bled for the prize, the end result was the same: the dark fog had cleared. They finally held the sharp, unyielding truth in their hands, and the stage was set for a swift, crushing operation that would bring a violent, long-overdue end to the Vulture Lord’s reign of terror.

Last to enter was the Lord Chieftain of the Voghondai, brother-in-law to the Legate of the First, who lumbered into the pavilion flanked by two of his tribe’s most renowned pit-dogs.

One of them carried an imposing tallness, his long black hair bound tightly behind his skull to expose a sharp widow’s peak. That one Edric knew well, Lixo, a man of few words and fewer mercies. The other was as stout and thick as Lixo was lean, his heavy forearms so thick with dark hair he looked more like a mountain bear standing on two legs than a man. Of that one Edric knew little, though he hardly doubted his skill.

Torghan, Chief of the Voghondai, looked every bit as weary as Edric felt. Yet, seeing the chieftain and his wolves brought a grim warmth to the Warden’s chest. They were magnificent killers, and a fine, bloody bunch to share a line with when iron started clashing.

It was Torghan’s people who, after the bloody breaking of the Fingers, had named Edric Puqa Sinka, Red-Breast, for the sheets of enemy blood that had soaked his breastplate.

They were the hammer you used when you needed to shatter a wall of spears, the anvil you drove iron against to make a breach for the rest of the host. The King had unleashed them like hounds against the final redoubt at the Fingers, and Edric intended to throw them straight into the breach once more.

"Torghan," Edric greeted, dipping his chin. "We are pleased you joined us."

"Edric," the chieftain grunted, offering a wolfish grin before nodding around the heavy oak table. "Gentlemen." He pulled out a sturdy chair, the wood groaning under his mass. "My warriors are thirsting for red. Many lost kin and brothers when the Vulture’s rats raided the Western Camp. Someone has to die for that."

"Many someones will," Ghalrim boasted, a dark smirk flashing across his face. "That is precisely why we’re gathered in this tent, isn’t it?"

"No," Edric cut in, his voice flat instantly draining the smiles in the room.

He leaned forward, placing his calloused palms flat on the oak table, his sharp eyes pinning every commander in turn to press the point home.

"We are here to enforce the King’s peace, and to break every man who dared to sully it.Nothing else. We are not here for private pleasures or shit like that."

He held their stares for a long, quiet heartbeat, before the corners of his mouth twitched upward.

"If, in the doing of it, however, we happen to hang a few hundred cunts and burn the soles off their feet... well, that can hardly be laid at our door, can it?"

A chorus laughs rumbled through the pavilion as every man at the table bared his teeth. They all wanted to have a go at the bastards, and Edric was more than forthcoming to that desire.